www.nightcliffcc.org.au THE UNDERGROWL THE STRICTLY UNOFFICIAL NIGHTCLIFF CRICKET CLUB NEWSLETTER 5th edition of 2017 – Thursday, 29 June 2017 “EXPLOSIVE!” SOME EARLY TESTIMONIALS “An absolute cracker!” Guy Fawkes “Unmissable ” William Tell “Holding all the Aces!” Luke Bayetto “Irreplaceable!“ The Environment NCC ‘SATURDAY CRICKET’ UPDATE With ‘Territory Day’ almost on our footsteps and in our Accident & Emergency wards for another year, all five Nightcliff teams are preparing to ‘light it up’ for the second half of the season. After almost seizing a famous first-innings win against top-side Darwin , who became alarmingly jittery after losing several wickets in a hurry chasing another undercooked Nightcliff first innings total, the Premier League Tigers are buoyed with knowledge that their best cricket is good enough if it is played consistently enough. The astute mathmeticians within our Premier Grade side (which there is exactly the same number of since ‘Coco’ McKinnon returned to B-Grade) have deduced that stringing a few two-day cricket wins together in succession will result in an accelerated propulsion up the ladder, with finals remaining a realistic possibility. We are quietly tipping that Udara Weerasinghe is comfortably leading Nathan Buckley in the 2017 Optimism Stakes! A nation (well, a sleepy seaside Darwin suburb) has turned their eyes and hearts to Huw ‘ Lazarus ’ Spring and his B52’s , who have propelled themselves into finals calculations on the back of a few cracking pre-(legal) fireworks wins. With two-day cricket on their smoky horizons, metronomic, chronic-ally hedonic, bionic, ironic, isotonic, napoleonic, supersonic Lachie Baird will now come right into his own. The UnderGrowl is strongly tipping that the ‘ Lach’ (stock & two smoking barrels) will influence the outcomes of more cricket games than Hansie Cronje in his heyday. If anyone can lift the hopes of C-Grade’s flagging 2017 spririts and prospects with a (needed) ‘hattrick’ of wins, it is the mercurial (in the true sense) Alexander the Tate , who on his day in a cricketing contest can turn the tide like Jupiter ’s 67+ moons. Well, that is if Jupiter was not essentially a gaseous planet, bereft of water. This pretty much encapsulates the enormity (and the sheer scientific improbability) of the task ahead of them in the remnants of the 2017 season, but we are confident that they will give it their utmost when they come out to play and they will slurp from the chalice of success again this year. Lach-ed and loaded (left, in the left pic! )…if he doesn’t become the seventh spinner in the Premier League side, Lachie can significantly influence the outcome of the 2017 Tigers B-Grade season. NCC OKTOBERFEST IN JULY STAKES! Once the smoke has finally lifted from Nightcliff Oval after ‘Territory Day’, the next social event to be hosted at the Donga is the ‘ Oktoberfest in July ’ event on Saturday , 22 July 2017 . # isgoodya This promises to be a most musical and jolly event, with games and frivolity abound, including an UnderGrowl coordinated ‘race call’ to be played at the event, with real cash prizes to be won, in the ‘NCC October in July Stakes’. Punters will be able to buy a ticket in the Great race (for $12 - $14, prices to be determined) and be in the running to win some of a prize pool of up to $150.00 . Each ticket will be drawn randomly out of a hat for each punter. Even the winners for the race will be drawn out randomly, before the race call is then composed for the event by our diligent and enthusiastic staff. Many of the horses selected for this prestigious event will have been trained to the nanosecond for it, including current favourite ‘Schmulian’s Killing It ’, precocious conveyance ‘ Dada’s Stylish Century ’ the enigmatic but highly talented ‘Pearson’s Hammies ’, the Nightcliff Sports Club galloper ‘ Gibbo Exclusion ’ (allegedly partly owned by some of the shadier connections in ‘Pearson’s Hammies ’ but that is under investigation!), ‘ Hatton Dynasty ’, crowd favourite ‘ D- Grade Session ’ (in the event together with it’s stablemates ‘ Jabiru Road Trip ’ and ‘ PINTs For Breakfast ’), ‘ Alexander’s Hattie ’ and his super sire, ‘ Tenacious Tate ’ and the Huw Spring - owned and trained ‘Miracle Recovery ’. Other Premier Grade teams also have entrants in the mix such as Darwin CC’s ‘ Kahlin Sunset ’ and the Tracy Village mare ‘ Death Star Plans ’, who should be highly competitive. Some of the other early nominations include ‘ JM’s Bunker ’, ‘ Flynny’s Meds ’ (presumably a reference to his medium pacers rather than any complex pharmaceutical regime), ‘Track Winding Back ’, ‘Coco’s Kitchen ’ and ‘ Corey Sinclair Quiz Question ’. It promises to be a hotly contested spectacle over the time honoured 2000m distance at Fannie Bay Racecourse. This breath-taking format will generate excitement not seen since Sizzler first opened their doors in Darwin city, with a spicy smorgasbord of chances being served up on the night. One thing is for sure and certain – sheer entertainment and fun will be clear winners on this night. L – There is a plethora of live chances in the ‘ NCC Oktoberfest in July Stakes ’ R – Folks will be lining up in rows to grab a ticket for this pulsating race for the Ages. “THEY SAID IT” - QUOTABLE QUOTES “Well, what are the odds of No not dodgy cricketing brother, former South African cricketer and that!” match-fixer Hansie Cronje , but new ‘Cornwallis Cup’ D-Grade Poker champion Luke ‘ Smoking Aces’ Bayetto . ‘Cool Hand Luke’ cleaned up the final pot of the night (due to non-Palmerston CC imposed time restrictions), on the final card of the hand, hitting his winning Ace with about a 14% chance of doing so at that juncture, leaving his Skipper to swallow some sadness with his last beer! “Show me the money! ” Luke Bayetto cleaned up like Sadie last weekend. “Best place to be in Oz for this This from former Nightcliff coach and swingman (well, all-rounder time of year!” really) Nigel Couzens , who will be in Darwin for the next few weeks and playing some D-Grade cricket. He is arriving in Darwin town this Saturday, 1 July 2017 – geez, he’s picked an absolute cracker of a day to get himself up here! Nigel Couzens …D-Grade will be hoping he brings his own fireworks up! “You can have the recruiting Comments from a curious spectator at the recent Premier Grade NCC budget of a small African nation, vs Darwin CC Invitational XI game at Kahlin, as the hosts narrowly st but pressure is still pressure!” avoided 1 innings defeat. Darwin CC plummeted from the relative safety of 4-120 to 9-151 chasing NCC’s undercooked total of 153, before squeaking home like Mickey Mouse after a late night bender. Things became quite jittery in the Darwin players’ viewing area as their middle order began to crumble like a home-brand space shuttle. Ultimately the Premier Grade Tigers were left to rue their failure to bank a few more runs themselves the week before. THE NEFARIOUS NINETIES! Gee whiz, when Angry Anderson was wheeled out onto Waverley in a dodgy blue bat mobile at half time in the 1991 AFL Grand and wailed on like a stabbed seal, was he the only singer in the 1990’s actually using his own voice? Musically, the Nineties were seriously duplicitous and fraudulent times. Not even the band the ‘Real McCoy ’ was the ‘real McCoy’! One of the UnderGrowl ’s extensive editorial staff recently attended a ‘ Mega 90s ’ concert and noted that the Real McCoy female lead vocalist on stage ( Karin Kasar ) was singing with such gusto and with an expression of sheer joy, that it seemed she truly believed she was still in the 1990s. Turns out that she had a pretty good reason for this. Kasar was the original studio singer for all of Real McCoy’s 1990’s hits, but she was ‘bumped’ into absolute oblivion whenever it came to sending a chick out on stage or on video to sing with German Rapper Olaf ‘O-Jay’ Jeglitza . Watching Kasar sing recently was like watching a battery hen being set free into the open sunlit air. German R&B duo, Milli Vanilli (just think of your little brother’s bicycle shorts and ridiculously long hair extensions), who sold zillions of records and won a Grammy, were probably the headline offender of the era. Girl(s)…and guys…you know it’s true! It was a shady, slithery character named Frank Farian , who signed up and paid lucrative advances to two young ‘himbos’ named Rob (Pilatus) and Fab (Morgan) , before he sprung the contractual ‘fine print’ upon them that they had to lip synch a number of songs (which had been pre-recorded by a few people who could actually sing!) or forfeit their advance payments. Milli Vanilli went on to win a Grammy Award in 1990 for ‘Best New Artist’, which was promptly snatched back from them after it came to light they were not the singers on any of their records and that they had basically mimed and grinded their way through the early part of the 1990s. But these movers and fakers were by no means ‘Robinson Crusoe’ (the Musical) in this regard. L – Angry Anderson . Now why couldn’t he have used a clandestine back up singer! R – Milli Vanilli. Any faker and they would have been for sale somewhere on a Balinese beach! Italian house musical group ‘ Black Box ’ wheeled in saucy French Caribbean model Katrin Quinol to adorn the album covers and purportedly ‘sing’ (lip synch) for the group. There is a stupendously funny Youtube video - search Black Box (live ) - in which you can hear Quinol actually singing live without the shield of the backing music.